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By Klint Lowry For trucking company recruiters, today’s job market can feel like last call at a singles bar. The crowd has thinned out and time is short. The lights come up, you look around and — wow — slim pickin’s. It’s discouraging. It’s been like this for weeks, months, years. You start to wonder: “Why is it so hard to find someone? Are all the good ones taken?” Maybe it’s more accurate to compare a recruiter to a matchmaker, whose job isn’t just to find “the one” for your company, but to do it over and over again. With a chronic shortage of viable candidates and an industry noted for its turnover, the task can feel like a never-ending last call. Striking out isn’t an option, and it’s easy to get discouraged, a little desperate even, and fall into that familiar trap: “Am I being too picky? Maybe my standards are just too high.” In the last-call scenario, that whatever-getsyou-through-the-night kind of thinking can lead to some serious regrets come the dawn. As hard as it is to hire and retain enough qualified drivers nowadays, companies may be tempted to settle, to skirt their own hiring standards and bring in people who aren’t quite up to snuff. At the Truckload Carriers Association’s 36th annual Safety and Security Division meeting, held May 21-23 in Phoenix, the general session featured a panel discussion titled “Are Drivers Worth the Risk?” Moderating the discussion was John Simmons, vice president of HNI Truck Group. The scheduled panelists were Clayton Fisk, vice president of risk management, insurance and safety for Warren Transport, Inc.; trucking industry advocate and defense attorney Ted Perryman; and Jeffrey K. Davis, vice president of safety for the Hudson Insurance Group. TCA’s Safety & Security Division Chair Scott Manthey was a last-minute addition to the group fresh off his acceptance of the Clare C. Casey Award as TCA’s Safety Professional of the Year. The central question of the discussion was whether taking a gamble and setting aside standards was worth it in order to get enough drivers behind the wheel. The panel’s consensus: No. When you compromise quality, you sacrifice safety. Just as you wouldn’t tell a lovelorn friend to stop being so picky and take what they can get, the same holds true for trucking companies seeking drivers. The aim of the discussion was to look at how companies can avoid getting into a mindset in which they give up on finding someone who’s right in favor of getting someone right now and regretting it later. “We wanted to talk about the influences 40 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017
on driver hiring and all the things everyone has to go through to hire that most important asset of our companies,” Simmons said as he opened the discussion. The term “asset” can make personnel sound like a commodity. But as the discussion moved along, there was an underlying theme this panel of industry experts kept coming back to: It’s important to remember that at some level, business is always personal and employer-employee relationships are just that — relationships. As an insurer, Davis said early in the discussion that he assesses between 100 and 150 carriers a year. “We look for that ‘driver-centric’ culture,” Davis said. “The difference between a decent company and a really great company is finding that organization that treats that driver with respect, and also isn’t just looking for ‘where do we get the next body.’” One of the things he considers “vitally important” in a company’s structure is how the recruiting and safety departments work together. Fisk said Warren Transport has taken the relationship between recruitment and safety a step further than most, making them part of the same department. “I meet with the recruiting people every week to discuss what we’re doing to bring new operators on and I also have the opportunity to reinforce the importance of maintaining the company’s safety record, to go over problem areas. They’re continually on board in regard to safety and not just recruiting. In our company the safety director himself actually OKs every driver in the fleet.” Manthey, who is senior vice president of safety and compliance at Interstate Distributor Co. in Tacoma, Washington, explained his company uses a tiered system to review candidates. “We have minimum standards,” Manthey said, “and then we’ve set a bar significantly higher.” Candidates who clear that higher bar can be greenlighted by the recruiting department supervisor. All others need to be cleared by the director of safety. Those who tiptoe the line of acceptability as a candidate or who are looking to get rehired will be reviewed by a committee, who then sends their decision to the chief operating officer. If it’s still a close call, the senior leader of safety and operations will make the final decision. Simmons added he knows of one company where every employee is signed off on by the vice president of operations, the vice president of recruiting, the vice president of training and the vice president of safety. The more people who have a hand in the hiring process, the more likely the company’s hiring standards will be followed. But this TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 41
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